
PRESENTED BY 






WHY DID NOT MASSACHUSETTS HAVE 
A SAYBROOK PLATFORM? 



A PAPER BY 

WILLISTON WALKER, Ph.D., 

KSSOR IN HARTFORD THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY. 



[Reprinted from the \ 



n^3 



' ? 



WHY DID NOT MASSACHUSETTS HAVE 
A SAYBROOK PLATFORM? 



A PAPER BY 

WILLISTON WALKER, Ph.D., 

PROFESSOR IN HARTFORD THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY. 



WHY DID NOT MASSACHUSETTS HAVE A 
SAYBROOK PLATFORM? 

TO the student of the history of New England, whether 
his interest centers chiefly in the religious or political 
development of the land, the Saybrook synod is of much 
importance. In the call and action of that body State and 
Church came into as intimate relations as have ever existed 
between them in English-speaking America. At the com- 
mand of the government of Connecticut, the representatives 
of the churches met, in 1708, and outlined an ecclesiastical 
constitution differing in many particulars from the churchly 
usages of the colony up to that time, — a constitution lim- 
iting sharply the freedom of individual congregations, pro- 
viding bodies for the adjudication of disputes within definite 
territories, appointing the method of ministerial licensure 
and settlement, and giving to the established religious sys- 
tem of the colony a fixity in administration markedly con- 
trasting with the prevailing individualism of Massachusetts 
Congregationalism during the greater part of the eighteenth 
century. The result of this synod, supported as it was by the 
State, stamped on Connecticut Congregationalism a peculiar 
semi-Presbyterian character ; and, so obvious was the unlike- 
ness between the organization of the churches of that colony 
and those of other parts of New England a hundred years 
ago, that the natural inclination is to look upon the Saybrook 
system as of local growth. In reality, however, it was the 
fruit of a movement which made itself strongly felt in Massa- 
chusetts, and probably originated in that colony. Why this 
wide-spread tendency accomplished little in the larger prov- 
ince, while it became dominant in Connecticut, is the object 
of present inquiry. 

The closing year of the seventeenth century saw Boston 
in a turmoil of religious controversy, though the diver- 
gencies between the two parties would not seem to a modern 
mind very radical. The recent political changes which had 



America:' view 

FEb 2 6 192S 



1892] Massachusetts and Sayb)'ook Platfor??i. 69 

transformed Massachusetts into a royal province, and even 
more the passing away of the older generation, had greatly 
lessened the influence of the ministry on legislation and the 
conduct of government. The restiveness which had all along 
been felt at the dominance of the clerical element had gath- 
ered strength. In Boston, foreign influences had established 
Episcopacy by 16S6, and though Episcopacy was as yet an 
exotic on Massachusetts soil, there were an increasing num- 
ber of persons throughout the churches who desired modifi- 
cation of the prevalent strictness in regard to admissions to 
full membership and of the almost universal restriction of the 
choice of ministers to members of churches in full com- 
munion. But over against them stood a conservative party 
embracing the older and more prominent ministers in the 
colony. Its leader was unquestionably Increase Mather, 
teacher of the Second Church in Boston, and since 1685, 

idcnt of Harvard, who though far from universally pop- 
ular had been for thirty years the leading clerical citizen of 
id. With him may be reckoned, since they were 

in sympathy, his son, Cotton Mather, from 1685 his col- 
league in the pastorate of the Boston church. To the same 
1 such ministers as James Allen of the 

ton First Church. John Higginson and Nicholas Noyes, 
Salem, and William Hubbard, of Ipswich. To these men 
the true method of bettering the religious state of New Eng- 
land seemed to lie in such an enforcement of discipline within 
the local church and exercise of watch over the churches by 
con: tentative of a colony or district as would pre- 

vent the incoming of looser fashions and preserve uniformity 

►vernment and lure. All this implied an incre; 

in ministerial and synodical authority — an increase all the 
more difficult to obtain at a time when the political tide in 
tinning in the other direction. 
The desires of this conservative party found chief expres- 

1 in the two ol meetings in which the ministers of 

that day gathered for conference, the Ministers' Convention 
and the Districl Associations. Though tin- general nature 

ich of 1 eetingS is clear, their origin is somewhat 

obscure. Ther reason to believe that the Minis- 



70 Yale Review, [May 

ters' Convention can trace its source, in germ if not in full 
organization, to the beginning of the Massachusetts colony ; 
while the local Associations, at least as continuously existing 
bodies, are of much later date. 1 It had been the custom 
from the earliest days of New England for the ministers of 
the whole colony to gather at the meetings of the General 
Court, especially at the Court of Election in May. 2 Their 
advice was frequently taken by that body while Massachu- 
setts was ruled by the first charter, and though by the close 
of the seventeenth century the ministry was no longer the 
political factor that it had been, these meetings were con- 
tinued, and were occasions of considerable ceremony. Cotton 
Mather, in his Magnalia, speaks of the Convention as existing 
"in each colony;" 3 and in the Ratio Disciplines enters into a 
lengthy description of its organization, sermon, discussions 
and dinner. 4 This Ministerial Convention was no judicial 
body ; but it debated questions of general interest, and its 
advice was much respected. 5 It might be made the instru- 
ment of a more centralized church government ; or, if not 
itself the head of a more consolidated ecclesiastical system, 
might recommend such a union to the churches. 

Beside this Ministerial Convention, there were, at the 
opening of the eighteenth century, five district Associations 

1 Valuable, though by no means exhaustive, articles on the history of these 
bodies are the Hist. Sketch of the Convention of Cong. Ministers in Mass., Cam- 
bridge, 1821 ; Dr. A. H. Quint, Cong. Quarterly, ii, 203-212, v, 293-304 ; S. J. 
Spalding, Ibid., vi, 161-175 ; also Cont. Eccles. Hist. Essex Co., Mass., pp. 8-56. 

2 Hints of such meetings are scattered through Winthrop's Journal, e. g. (ed. 
1853), i, 157, 363, ii, 3, 76. The statement of Lechford is direct, Trumbull's 
ed., p. 62. Whether the ministers met at first as an organized body is perhaps 
doubtful. The Hist. Sketch above cited, p. 5, says that the " presumptive evi- 
dence " is " that there was no organized Convention before the year 1680." 

3 Magnalia, ed. 1853-55, "> 271. 

4 Pp. 176, 177. 

5 " Then the Ministers chusing a Moderator, do propose Matters of public 
Importance, refering to the Interest of Religion in the Churches," Ibid., p. 176. 
Such were e. g., in 1697, when the body protested against " tendencies which 
there are amongst us towards Deviations from the good Order wherein our 
Churches have . . . been happily established ;" or in 1698, when they decided 
that " the Church Covenant as Commonly practised in the Churches" is script- 
ural. I. Mather, Order of the Gospel, pp. 8, 9, 39. 



1892] Massachusetts and Saybrook Platform. 71 

in Massachusetts, 1 all tracing- their immediate origin to the 
Association meeting at Cambridge which had been founded 
in October, 1690, and included most of the ministers in the 
vicinity of Boston. There had been ministerial meetings, 
similar to the later Associations, in the early days of the 
colony : 3 but for reasons not now easy to discover, unless it be 
for fear of Presbyterian tendencies, these early meetings were 
abandoned. Rev. Thomas Shepard, of Charlestown, in his 
election sermon of 1672, declared that he recalled such gath- 
erings in his childhood, and that there were "hundreds yet 
living" who could " remember the ministers' meetings in 
the several towns by course, at Cambridge, Boston, Charles- 
town, Roxbury, 6cc." But the permanent reestablishment ol 
Associations came about through English example. On Sep 
tember 7, 1655, such a body had been formed at Bodmin, in 
Cornwall. Its meetings were not probably of long continu- 
ance ; by the summer of 1659, the journal had closed. But 
the record book 4 passed into the possession of one of the 
members, Rev. Charles Morton; and Morton came to New 
England in 16SC, and became the pastor at Charlestown. A 
man of much influence in the colony, it is probable that it 
3 his endeavors which resulted in the organization of 
the first permanent district Association in Massachusetts, on 
October 13, 1690. This body embraced most of the minis- 
ters in the vicinity of Boston, and was often called by that 
name,* though its meetings, at least during the early part of 

1 This is shown by the signatures to the J' reposals of 1705, given in the Pano- 
flist.x, 323. It illustrates the obscurity of the subject that the articles written by 
Dr. Quint thirty years ago knew nothing of the existence of two of the live and 
he was unable to trace the third to a period earlier than nearly twenty years sub- 
sequent to : 

- Winthrop, i, 13-; ; Lechford, p. 37, a passage which Dr. Trumbull has illus- 
trated with notes of great value. 

3 Eye Salve, or a Watchword / Jesus ( his Churches, 

quoted by Dr. Quint, ii, 204. irches 

Quarrel Espoused, ed. 171 3, p. 

*This book, containing a list of the mr the Bodmin Afl 

ation, and also <>i the Cambli ! liatiot), from 169O to 1704, is in dis- 

possession of th : ;>t. Sociei tr. Quint as cited, pp< 

s So called in the signatures to the PrcpottU 



72 Yale Review. [May 

its history, were " at the College in Cambridge, on a Mon- 
day at nine or ten of the clock in the morning, once in six 
weeks, or oftener." * Its pledge of union and its rules were 
based on those of the Bodmin body. The example thus set 
was followed by the organization of similar bodies, in Essex 
County, about Weymouth, about Sherborne, and in Bristol 
County, during the last decade of the seventeenth and first 
three or four years of the eighteenth century. 2 Their pur- 
pose was deliberative as well as social, and the resolutions 
of the Cambridge-Boston body at least, embraced a wide 
range of doctrine and practice, 3 and showed a decided 
tendency to assert the judicial character of ecclesiastical 
councils. 4 

But there were not wanting those, especially among the 
younger ministry, and even in the Cambridge-Boston Associ- 
ation itself, who looked toward a modification of Congrega- 
tional strictness rather than a return to the early ideals. The 
leaders of this party were four youngerly men of position, two 
of them being John Leverett and William Brattle, graduates 
of Harvard in 1680, who had become tutors in the college in 
1685, the year which saw the beginning of Increase Mather's 
presidency, and who had taken practical charge of the col- 
lege during Mather's long absence in England as agent for 
the colony. Leverett was destined to be Mather's second 
successor as the head of the college, while Brattle in 1696, 
became pastor of the Cambridge church. With them were 
associated Thomas Brattle, brother of the Cambridge pastor, 
and from 1693 to 1713, treasurer of Harvard, and Ebenezer 
Pemberton, who from 1700 to 1717, was colleague pastor of 

1 Its rules are given in full in the Magnalia, ed. 1853-55, ii, 271, 272. 

2 Proposals of 1705. Indications of the existence of an association in Essex 
Co., (called Salem in the Proposals) are found in the records of the Cambridge 
body as early as November 1691, and these records by 1692, imply the existence 
of at least three bodies, — but which is the third is hard to say. When the next 
association further north than Salem, that at Bradford, was formed in 1719, its for- 
mula of union was the same as that of Bodmin and Cambridge, and as it in all 
probability was an offshoot from Salem it indicates a common origin for all. 

3 Cotton Mather gives a long series of the conclusions of this body in full, 
Magnalia, ii, 239-269. 

4 E. g., Ibid., p. 248. 



1892] Massachusetts and Say brook Platform. 



i j 



the Old South Church, in Boston. The work of these innova- 
tors was in two main directions — the founding of a new 
church (Brattle Church), sympathetic with their beliefs, in 
Boston ; and the exclusion of the Mathers from the control of 
Harvard. Both tasks they accomplished, but at the cost of 
much bitter personal quarrel. 

Occupying a position between the Mathers and the innova- 
tors, and not without some sympathy for the latter, was 
Samuel Willard, a man considerably older than either of the 
four just enumerated, the teacher of the Old South Church 
in Boston, and from the practical deposition of Increase 
Mather in 1701, in fact, though not in title, president of 
I larvard. 

Into the story of the founding of Brattle Church and the 
expulsion of the Mathers from dominance at Harvard, there 
is no need to enter in detail. 1 The changes desired by the 
innovators involved principally the abandonment of public 
relations of religious experience as a condition of admission 
to full communion ; and the extension of a share in a minis- 
ter's selection to all baptized adults who contributed to his 
support.* With these alterations they desired also to com- 
bine what would now be called an " enrichment " of the ser- 
. in the form of regular public reading of the scriptures 
without explanatory comment; and an extension of church 
privileges so tiiat any children presented by any professing 
Christian sponsor, whether parent or not, should receive 
baptism. These positions the innovators apparently did nut 
hold at first in an aggressively controversial manner. But 
they were known, and in 1697 the Mathers took rather 

'The story of ['>'. rch is treated at length by Lolhrop, Hist, of the 

Church in Brattle Quincy, Hist, of i. rsity, 

i. 127 Robbing, Hist. in Boston* pp, 40-44 ; Palfrey, 

si 1 ; Sible . 
aUs of Harvard, biog. of th<- Brattles and Leveretl ; Brooks a. Km. 

' :ss., pp. 237-254; II. A. Hill, Hist. Old S 308-313. The rela- 

tions of the Mathers to Harvard are unsympathelirall y told by Oiiincy, . 

i. 57-126. This is still the fullest treatment of the sul > Robbins, 

- ; 2?5 ; H. A. Hill. Ibid., i, 319-323 ; 
Wendell, Cotton Mather , passim. 

'The latter had already been dotir at Salem and Dedham. Sec RobbittS, 
Ibid., ; 



74 Yale Review. [May 

aggravating occasion to attack the two principal changes 
desired by the Brattles and their friends. 1 This attack led to 
decided action. In January, 1698, Thomas Brattle trans- 
ferred to a body of associates, of which he was the leader, 
the site in Boston on which a new meeting-house was at 
once erected ; and in May, 1699, the associates sent a call, 
reinforced by cordial letters from William Brattle, Leverett 
and Pemberton, 2 to Benjamin Colman, a Harvard graduate 
of 1692, then in England, asking him to become their pastor, 
and requesting him to procure ordination at more sympa- 
thetic hands than he would find in Boston. On November 
1, 1699, Colman was in Boston, a minister according to Pres- 
byterian ideas, but no clergyman in the view of strict Con- 
gregationalists ; on November 17, the associates put forth a 
Manifesto* asserting the principles of the innovators; and 
this publication was followed, on December 12, by the organ- 
ization of a church of fourteen members, without aid of 
council or countenance from other churches. 

All this was thoroughly at variance with the older New 
England theory and practice, to the Mathers it seemed the 
dawning of a " day of temptation begun upon the town and 
land." 4 But, in spite of vigorous pamphlets from the con- 
servatives, 5 and a vote of the Ministerial Convention in May, 
1700, designed to prevent a second Brattle Church and 

1 When Cotton Mather published his Life of Jonathan Mitchel, in 1697, (also 
in the Magnalia, ed. 1853-55, ii, 66-113), Increase Mather took occasion in a pre- 
fatory letter, addressed " To the Church at Cambridge . . . and to the Students 
of the Colledge there," to set forth Mitchel's view of the necessity of relations, 
and made pointed exhortations to the church, tutors and students, in a way 
doubtless exasperating to the innovators. Three months later in the same year, 
when the Charlestown church had chosen a minister in the way desired by the 
Brattles and their friends, the Mathers' church sent a letter of admonition to its 
sister in Charlestown "for betraying the liberties of the churches, in their late 
putting into the hands of the whole inhabitants the choice of a minister." 
Robbins, p. 42. 

2 The call and extracts from the letters are in Lothrop, Hist, of the Church in 
Brattle Street, pp. 45-48. 

3 In full, Ibid., 20-26. 

4 C. Mather's Journal, Quincy, Hist. Harvard, i, 486. 

5 The most important is Increase Mather's Order of the Gospel, Boston, 1700. 



1892] Massachusetts and Say brook Platform. 75 

strengthen the government of the churches, 1 the new- 
church won recognition in Boston, the Mathers were 
defeated; and before the close of the next year, 1701, 
Increase Mather, in spite of his great services to the colony 
and the support of the representatives of the towns in the 
lower House of the General Court, was practically dismissed 
from the presidency of Harvard,' by the combined effect of 
the Brattle Church quarrel and long standing political 
grudges, dating back to his return with the new charter 
from England. His virtual successor was Willard, and Har- 
vard came under the control of the innovators. 

Here then was a state ol affairs serious enough to incline 
the supporters of the old order, who were the majority in 
the colony, to strengthen the machinery for enforcing eccle- 
tical authority, the more so that other towns than Boston 
were in turmoil. 3 It was to remedy these supposed evils 
that the Proposals of 1705 were prepared, which became the 
model for the Saybrook action in Connecticut. But the 
remarkable thing about the movement which led to them 
is that, such is the curious effect of the lapse of a little time 
in modifying ecclesiastical struggles, we find some men 
prominent among the Brattle Church innovators who now 
support associational attempts which had for their design 
the prevention of similar novelties in the future. 

The steps which led to this consociational movement are 
obscure owing to the loss of records, but as far as the writer 

1 The vote, which is important as showing the desire of the Convention for a 
closer union of the churches, is given by Increase Mather, Disquisition Concern- 
cUsiastical Con 38, " To ; < vent the great mischief to 

the Evangelical Interests, that mav arise from the unadvised proceedings of . 
pie to gather Churches in the Neighbourhood, it is provided, that the Result of the 
Synod, in 1662, relating to the Consociation of Churches may be Republished, 
with an Address to the Churches, Intimating OUI desires (and BO fal as we are 
Concerned our pur; th.it Advice carefully attended, and the irregular 

le hereafter contrary to that Advice, not Encouraged." 
tie ground of complaint was Mather's non-residence, but its inad- 
equacy is shown by the fact that the Court took Willard on the Same terms, 
keeping up a show 1 having his title that of I lent 

Mathei .,1,1c 

I nvii, Cambridge, I . ;i, and at tin- 

South Church in Boston," Q 



y6 Yale Review. [May 

can ascertain the initiation was in the Ministers' Convention 
on June i, 1704. That body issued a circular letter to the 
churches, urging greater faithfulness in pastoral duty, and 
proposing: 1 

" That the Associations of the Ministers in the several Parts of 
[the] Country may be strengthened ; And the several Associations 
may by Letter hold more free Communications with one another." 

The document thus urging the strengthening of Ministe- 
rial Associations was signed by all the Boston ministers, 
except Increase Mather; the first three names being those 
of Samuel Willard, Ebenezer Pemberton and Benjamin Col- 
man. Cotton Mather's signature was the sixth, and with 
them were twenty-two others, embracing a large proportion 
of the ministers of eastern Massachusetts from Andover on 
the north to Barnstable and Bristol (then claimed by Massa- 
chusetts) on the south, and Sudbury and Mendon on the 
west. As Leverett and Thomas Brattle were not pastors, 
the only missing name of the innovators mentioned which 
could have been appended is that of William Brattle. 

This earnest and practical vote was communicated to the 
ministry of the colony and reinforced by a letter sent out by 
the Cambridge-Boston Association, over the signature of its 
moderator Samuel Willard, on Nov. 6, 1704. The letter 
urged : 2 

" That the Pastours of our Churches may more comfortably 
enjoy y e assistance of one another, w c doubtless y 7 all find more 
than a little needfull for y m under y e difficulty w c in their ministry 
y y often meet withall, you are very sensible how usefull their well- 
formed association may be unto y m . * * * * * It is to be 
hoped, y l where such associations have been already formed, 
y y will be lively maintained, & preserved, & faithfully carried 
on. And where y y are not yet formed, y e Lord will stir up his 
servants to consider w* to do, y* y y may not incur y e inconven- 
iences of him y l is alone. But there is one thing more, w c has 
been great desired, & never yet so fully attained. It is, That y e 
severall associations of Ministers may uphold some communion 

1 This letter is given in full, without signatures, Ratio Discipline, pp. 178, 179 ; 
and with the names in the Panoplist, x, 320, 321. 

2 In the manuscript records of the Cambridge-Boston Association. 



1892] Massachusetts and Say brook Platform. 77 

and correspondence w th one another, and j* y 7 would freely 
comunicate unto each other by letters, w^ever y 7 may appre- 
hend a watchful regard unto y e great interests of Religion among 
us may call to be considered." 

The next step in the movement is obscure, owing to the 
loss of the records of the Cambridge-Boston Association and 
the Minister's Convention at this point. When the veil is 
once more lifted it is nearly a year later, Sept. 13, 1705, when 
nine delegates, representing the five Associations of Boston, 
Wevmouth, Salem, Sherborne, and Bristol, (as far as known 
all then existing in Massachusetts) met and drew up the 
Proposals of 1705. ' Exactly how this committee was ap- 
pointed is not stated, but that it was no chance coming 
together is shown by its declaration that it met " according 
to former agreement." If conjecture may be allowed a place, 
it seems probable that the resolutions of the Ministers' Con- 
vention of 1704, and the commendatory letter by which they 
were accompanied, awakened a response which seemed to 
warrant further action. This action may well have taken the 
form of a vote at the Ministers' Convention of May 1705 ■ 
favoring a further extension of associational powers, and 
naming a place and time at which representatives of the 
Associations should come together and draw up the desired 
scheme. However this may have been, the fact is certain 
that this committee, on Sept. 13, 1705, prepared a series of 
Proposals in two parts, the first aiming at the establishment 
of carefully organized Local Associations in all sections ofMas- 

1 The date and place and signatures are given in the copy of the Proposals 
printed in the Panoplist, x, 323. In the copy prefixed by John Wise to his 
Churches Quarrel Espousedtilt names are intentionally suppressed, and the phrase 
" Delegates of the Associations " reads "Association," implying that the com- 
mittee represented one association instead of five. 

' I know little regarding the events of this meeting. The date was Mav u : 
and Sewall speaks of dining with the ministers, in company with the governor 
and other magistrates, at Mr. Willard's hoi . Mass. Hist. \» ., vi, 132). 

Hut I think we can go a little farther. The " Question " which th<- " Proposals " 

answer was clearly not propounded by the Committee that drafted the . 
By what body was it so probably submitted to them as by th ' Conven- 

tion rigin of the " Question " in the Convention of 1705 teems doubly 

probable in view of the prompt ratification of the " PropoSftll " which snsw 
it by the Convention of 1706. 



j8 Yale Review. [Mas- 

sachusetts, which should give advice to pastors in difficulties 
and license candidates for the ministry ; and a General Asso- 
ciation meeting annually : and the second proposing the for- 
mation of standing councils, or consociations, composed of 
the ministers and representatives of the churches in particu- 
lar districts, the decisions of which should " be looked upon 
as final and decisive." To these Proposals were appended the 
names of Rev. Messrs. Samuel Willard, Cotton Mather and 
Ebenezer Pemberton of the Cambridge-Boston Association; 
Samuel Torrey and John Danforth representing that of 
Weymouth ; Samuel Cheever and Joseph Gerrish that of 
Salem ; Grindal Rawson the Sherborne body ; and Samuel 
Danforth the Bristol Association. 

Two forms of the document have been preserved, one by 
John Wise, bearing the attestation of an Association, doubtless 
the Cambridge-Boston, dated Nov. 5, 1705, l and the other 
published in the Panoplist, from the manuscript left by Cotton 
Mather, and having the far more important endorsement : 

" Further approved and confirmed, and a resolution to pursue 

with the Divine assistance, in all suitable methods, the intention 

of the said proposals : — By a General Convention of the Ministers 

at Boston ; 30^. $m. 1706." 

Attested by 

Samuel Willard, Mod." 

Such were the supporters of the Proposals of 1705. But 
owing to the fact that some of our best New England his- 
torians have forgotten that there was a fuller text than that 
given by John Wise, or have at least forgotten the signatures 
and endorsements which he suppressed, the real extent of the 
movement has not had due recognition. In view of the 

1 Wise declares "where the Place was, or the Persons who were present in 
this Randezvouze, shall never be told by me, unless it be Extorted by the Rack." 
Churches Quarrel, ed. 1715, p. 115. It is interesting to notice that Nov. 5, 1705, 
was the first Monday in Nov., a regular meeting day of the Boston Association 
as shown by their records as far as extant. The Cambridge-Boston Association 
seems to have been the agent in communicating the Proposals to the ministers 
and associations in 1705, as it was in forwarding the Conventional resolutions in 
1704. 

2 /. e. May 30, 1706, the regular meeting of the Ministers' Convention. This 
attestation has been overlooked by the modern historians who have treated of the 
Proposals. 



1892] MassacJmsetts and Say brook Platform. 79 

agency of five Associations in their composition, and the ap- 
proval of the Proposals by the body representative of all the 
Massachusetts ministers, it is hardly just to affirm with 
Prof. Tyler that " the document was understood to have been 
the work of the two Mathers, backed by a coterie of clerical 
admirers," ' nor have Drs. J. S. Clark a or H. M. Dexter 3 
spoken with their accustomed accuracy in representing the 
Proposals as the device of Cambridge-Boston Association 
alone. So far from being the work of a faction, it would be 
hard to show what elements of then existent Boston Con- 
gregationalism were unrepresented in their production. 

Parallel to this movement in Massachusetts ran a similar 
effort in Connecticut. That colony had probably no such 
innovators as the Brattles and their friends, but its churches 
were in about as unsettled a state as those of Massachusetts.* 
The great interest of the colony during the opening years 
of the eighteenth century was the foundation of Yale Col- 
lege, and the men who founded it were affiliated in some 
degree with the conservatives of eastern Massachusetts. 
The connection between the establishment of Yale and the 
party about Boston who were opposed to the liberalizing of 
Harvard has been pressed too far by President Quincy. 
Yale had its birth independently of Boston ecclesiastical 
quarrels.* But while thus moved by Connecticut rather than 

1 Hist, of American Literature, ii, 106. Prof. Tyler falls into the further error 
of saying that it was issued without any signature attached. 

* Sketch of th urcht-s in Mass., p. 115. 

seen in its Literature, 491-494. Dr. Dexter's treatment 
of the whole matter is unsatisfactory, and chronologically reversed, in that he 
discu K>k Platform before the Proposals. References a few ; 

on show that he was acquainted with the Panoplist text, but he could QOt have 
had it in mind while writing this be seem to have noticed 

the signatures or the approval by Convention. 

4 Compare Trumbull, < and the vote <>( the General Conn 

calling the Saybrook Synod, Conn, Records x v, 51. 

Qoincy, Hist, of Harvard x I, \ review of Quincy, 

Biblical Repository, July, Oct. 184!, Jan. i-l-' ; Woolsry. //it. Dit< W t . . , 
f ore after th, >s f 

New // ■■>: Hist. Soc, iii, 1-31 ; s. E. Baldwin, THd., Y.t Mr. I. \. 

Doyle, in his Puritan CoUm$*j,l\, 491, still takei Quincy as his guide. The 

I ll by no : best. 



80 Yale Review. [May 

Massachusetts interests, the men who founded Yale College 
in 1701 were in sympathy with the conservative party in 
Boston. Evidence of this cordiality of feeling is ample. 
The earliest document in the archives of Yale is a beautifully 
written " Scheme for a College," endorsed in Cotton 
Mather's handwriting, 1 and though its proposals were not 
adopted, it manifests that active interest which Cotton 
Mather always felt in the institution for which he secured, 
in 1718, the benefactions and the name of Yale. Nor was 
this interest one-sided. On Aug. 7, 1701, "the first fixed 
date " 2 in the history of Yale College, the ministers most 
concerned in its foundation, Israel Chauncy, Thomas Buck- 
ingham, Abraham Pierson, James Pierpont, and Gurdon 
Saltonstall, wrote to Isaac Addington, Secretary of the 
Massachusetts colony and to his friend Judge Sewall, both 
men of strong conservative sympathies, asking the draft of 
a charter for the proposed college. To this request Adding- 
ton and Sewall heartily responded, and though the draft 
was seriously modified by its recipients, the letters, and 
others sent by Increase Mather, show the degree of cor- 
diality and ready communiction existing between the leading 
Connecticut ministers and the conservative party about 
Boston. 3 Anything done at Boston would soon be known in 
Connecticut. 

Yale College having been founded, its trustee meetings 
became the most representative ecclesiastical gatherings in 
the colony, and soon discussed other matters than college 
business. As a result, at their meeting at Guilford in March 
1703, they sent forth a circular letter to sound the ministers 
as to the desirability of a united confession of faith. In this 
epistle they besought their ministerial brethren to : — 4 

1 Compare, F. B. Dexter, Ibid., p. 4. 

2 Ibid., p. 5. The letter is lost. 

3 For these letters and the draft of the charter see Woolsey, Discourse, pp. 
86, 87, 91-94. 

4 From the manuscript in the possession of Yale University, Clap, Annals . . . 
of Yale, p. 12, represented this as a proposition for a general Synod of all Con- 
necticut churches, and Trumbull, Connecticut, i, 478, copied him. Such an inter- 
pretation is an unwarranted inference from the paper. Compare F. B. Dexter, 
Biog. Sketches of the Grad. of Yale Col., p. 12. 



1892] Massachusetts and Say brook Platform. Si 

" Peruse y e assemblies Confession of Faith, as also j x made by 
-ynod held at Boston may 12. 1680 & manifest in convenient 
season y r concurrence w th us in addressing our Religious Govern- 
ment, as soon as we may be prepared, y % they would please 

to recommend to our people & y r posterity y e 

Confession made by y- Synod in Boston May 12. 16S0 

we request you d signifye y r minds to y e Rev ! . M r . Buck- 
ingham in Say-Brook, >P. Woodbridge in Hartford, M r . 
Davenport in Stratford, & m r Andrew or Pierpont in Milford 
or N-Haven, y : so from you we may understand how far y r is a 
generall concurrence in y' p'mises." 

What reponse this appeal elicited cannot be affirmed with 
definiteness; but it shows the drift of thought among the 
leading ministers of Connecticut. It is not, however, till 
rive years later that their movements again became plain. 
Meanwhile the attempts of the ecclesiastical leaders in 
ssachusetts to establish standing councils had borne fruit 
in 1705 and 1706, and were not unfamiliar to their friends in 
nnecticut. 1 The thought of the Connecticut ministers 
turned toward something more than the approval of a con- 
fession of faith, they would now couple with it the establish- 
ment of a system of stricter government like that attempted 
in Massachusetts. And now, in Dec, 1707, an event well- 
nigh without a parallel in American history occurred, — a 
; minister of the colony, Gurdon Saltonstall of New 
IS called directly from the pulpit to the Gov- 
ernor's chair. Saltonstall had experienced in his own 
pastorate the evils of a church quarrel/ he was a graduate 
Harvard and a friend of the .Massachusetts conserva- 
tive- : and on his election to the governorship the move- 
ment for stricter church order went rapidly forward. 4 At 

1 No further proof is needed than that the Saybrook Articles are taken to some 
extent verbally from t ; 

.ikins, //. . 377. 

•Saltonstall was from Haverhill, Mi raduated at Harvard in 1 

.'• of the ministers who requested AddingtOU and Sewall for the draft 
of a charter for Yale in 17 

4 S( : tubtleSS correct in the statement that the favorable action of the 

Connecticut legislature on toe Saybrook proposition •■• 'in about '* very 

much through the influences ol the honorable Gurdon Saltonstall," />; 

11, I 70 I , ; . 



82 Yale Review. [May 

the first meeting of the General Court subsequent to his 
election, May, 1708, a bill was introduced into and passed 
the upper House, of which the governor was than a member, 
ordering the churches of each county to assemble by pastors 
and delegates at their county towns on June 28, 1708, to pre- 
pare rules for ecclesiastical discipline, and to elect representa- 
tives to a Synod which should meet at the next Commence- 
ment at Saybrook, in September, and draw up a platform of 
government for the whole colony. Apparently the bill met 
with opposition from the representatives of the towns in the 
lower House, but after some conference it passed that body 
also, 1 and became a law. In accordance with its provisions 
the Saybrook Synod met Sept. 9, 1708, with an attendance 
of four laymen and twelve ministers, eight of the latter 
being trustees of Yale College, and adopted the Confession of 
1680, recommended by the trustees in 1703, and the Heads of 
Agreement prepared largely through the agency of Increase 
Mather as a bond of union between Presbyterians and Congre- 
gationalists about London in 1691 and lauded by the Mathers 
as the best exposition of New England Congregationalism. 
Its most important work was of course the fifteen Articles, 
the " Saybrook Platform," which embody the features, and 
to some extent the language, of the Proposals of 1705, though 
in a considerably more carefully wrought out plan. This 
three-fold result was approved by the General Court at its 
session the following October, and established as the legal 
religious system of Connecticut, though with allowance of 
toleration to dissenters. 

But although unanimously agreed upon by the Synod at 
Saybrook and heartily approved by the General Court, 
there was diversity of opinion enough in regard to the 
merits of the system to have wrecked any attempt at its es- 
tablishment dependent on voluntary agreement rather than 
legislative support. Differing views as to the nature of the 
government thus created existed in the Synod itself; a while 

1 See Bacon's Discourse in Cont. Eccles. Hist. Conn., pp. 32, 33. 

2 Rev. Noah Hobert of Fairfield, a strong supporter of Saybrook high 
churchism, declared " a man must be a perfect Stranger to the Principles and 
Temper of that Time, who is capable of supposing that either of these Parts of 



1892] Massachusetts and Saybrook Platform. S$ 

in the county meetings, which were convened to put the orders 
of the Court into practice, a yet greater divergence appeared. 
While the churches of Fairfield county were not satisfied with 
its strictness and added a stringent interpretation of their 
own, 1 those of New Haven county found it far too strenuous 
and put on record a markedly minimizing explanation of its 
rules.* New London county appears never to have been 
enthusiastic in regard to the Platform ; and the reading of 
the legislative vote of approval in the church at Norwich 
of which John Woodward, a scribe of the Saybrook Synod 
was pastor, is affirmed to have been the cause of a quarrel 
which nearly rent the church and led it ultimately to re- 
nounce the Saybrook system. 3 At East Windsor the church 
and pastor took opposite views and the result was a dispute 
which distressed the declining years of Timothy Edwards. 4 
Why then did a system of church government generally 
red by the ministry of both colonies, but meeting with 
opposition in both, become established in Connecticut, 
while its most essential feature, the consociation of churches 
failed in Massachusetts? Cotton Mather, writing between 
1719 and \J- as the explanation: — 

" Su< h J'roposals as these found in one of the New-English 
a more general Reception (and even a Countenance 
. the Civil Government] than in the Rest. In the other, there 
were some very considerable Persons among the Ministers, as 
well as of the Brethren^ who thought the Liberties of particular 
Churciies t<» be in danger of being too much limited and infringed 
in them. And in Deference to these Good Men, the Proposals 

our Constitution [th< I Agreement and Articles] taken singly or with- 

out its Connection with the other, wonld have been unanimously agreed upon 
and consented to by thai "./« Attempt a- lUustratt . . 

tUsiastual Constitution of, . . Qmtuck '7^5, p. S. See also 

'.■ ecticut, i, .: 

1 In full in Orcutt, Hist, 
i, 312, 313. 

* In full in J. Todd, Faithful Na\ f the First & 

in Wallin N ■••■■ Haven, 1750, pp. 33-37. 

* Caulkins, Hist of X rvich. pp. 284-287. 

' ■■■ ... 246. 

. 



84 Yale Review. [May 

were never prosecuted, beyond the Bounds of meer Proposals 
* * * * xhere was indeed a Satyr, Printed against these 
written Proposals, and against the Servants of GOD that made 
them. Nevertheless, those Followers of the Lamb, remembring 
the Maxim of, Not Answering, used the Conduct which the Uni- 
versity of Helmstadt lately prescribed under some Abuses put 
upon them ; Visum est non alto Remedio quam generoso Silentio et pio 
Contetnptu, utendum nobis esse." 

Mather's reference is of course to the brilliant attack on 
these Proposals put forth in 1710 by Rev. John Wise, of what 
was then Chebacco parish in Ipswich, Mass., under the title 
of The Churches Quarrel Espoused, and which Wise followed 
in 1717 by a powerful exposition of what he believed to 
be the system set forth in the Cambridge Platform, The 
Vindication of the Government of New England Churches. The 
cogency of these tracts has been justly praised. They are 
certainly the ablest exposition of the democratic principles 
which modern Congregationalism has come to claim as its 
own that the eighteenth century produced. Yet without 
abating the respect due to Wise for his work, or minimizing 
the influence which his books exercised on political thought 
when republished on the eve of the revolutionary war, it 
may be questioned whether their effect in bringing to 
naught the Proposals in Massachusetts has not been rated 
higher than it should. 1 Wise's satire was not published till 
four years after the ratification of the Proposals by the Minis- 
ters' Convention, and not till two years after Connecticut 
had inaugurated a similar system. Some influence other 
than the Churches Quarrel Espoused must have hindered, or the 
scheme would have come into practice before that tract was 
given to the world. Mather indicates other reasons. The 
Proposals in Massachusetts were opposed by " some very con- 
siderable persons ;" there was opposition also in Connecti- 
cut, if not in the same degree, enough to have made a volun- 
tary union unattainable. But in Connecticut the movement 
had " Countenance from the Civil Government "; in Massa- 

1 E. g., Clark, Hist. Sketch Cong. Chs. in Mass., pp. 115-121 ; Tyler, Hist. 
American Literature, ii, 104-116 ; Dexter, Cons:, as seen in its Literature, pp. 494- 
502. 



1S92] Massachusetts and Say brook Platform, S5 

chusetts it had none. Here then was the greatest point of 
difference. Nothing could have been more diverse than the 
legislative situation in the two colonies. Probably the 
General Court of Connecticut was never in a state more 
favorable to the enactment of an ecclesiastical constitution 
than in 170S. It was still under its semi-independent 
charter, able to choose its own upper House and governor. 
That governor was a minister, warmly attached to the 
church system of the colony, popular alike with his minis- 
terial associates and with the legislature, 1 and a believer in 
the desirability of a stricter organization of the churches. 
The Connecticut Court had long been accustomed to inter- 
fere in the affairs of the churches, such interference was not 
unpopular with as representative men as the trustees of 
Vale, 3 and would meet with even less resistance under a 
respected ministerial governor. 

The situation of the Massachusetts General Court was far 
different. That body had received an entirely new constitu- 
tion in 1692, and one that practically ended the old-time 
clerical influence. The lower House was still chosen by the 
people, but the upper House, though nominated by the Gen- 
eral Court, was subject to the veto power of the governor, a 
1 freely exercised ; ' and the governor was of royal ap- 
Qtmenti with authority to reject all bills distasteful to 
him. The governor at this time was the notorious Joseph 
Dudley, no friend to the Congregational Churches of Massa- 
chusetts, whose position may be judged by a letter to the 
il Trade in England, in July, 1704, in which he com- 
is that the Court used its right of nomination to the 
upper House "to affront every loyal and good man that 
loves the Church of England and dependence on her 

lo Clearer demonstration of the estimate in which Saltonstall was held by 
the legislature of Connecticut Ulght than the feci that in order to 

him in 1707 that body repealed a law requiring the governor to he chosen from 
candidates nomi; 

1 Compare the paper of 17^3, ,;;;/,-, p. m, in irhich the trustees propose 
the Court to establish a confession of faith. 

"idley rejected 5 nominations, in 1704, 2, and in 1706, 2. Palfrey, 



86 Yale Review. [May 

Majesty's government"; 1 and who, while not wholly cutting 
loose from the Roxbury Congregational Church of which 
he was a member, worshipped much in the Boston Episcopal 
chapel, and signed a petition to the Archbishop of Canter- 
bury, in 1703, in which he and his associates are styled " the 
members of the Church at Boston." 2 The upper House, 
too, which so readily passed the Saybrook bill in Connecticut, 
was not likely to be so compliant with the wishes of the 
ministers in Massachusetts. Its membership was largely 
from Boston and the immediate vicinity, and there was 
already growing up in the commercial and governmental 
center of New England a class more influenced by trade and 
crown appointments than desire to maintain the discipline 
of the churches of the colony or the old spirit of political 
independence. The Proposals of 1705 could not, in any 
reasonable probability, have passed the Massachusetts legis- 
lature, and failing of legislative support there was enough 
opposition in either colony to prevent their establishment. 
That the ecclesiastical development of Massachusetts and 
Connecticut in the last century ran in divergent paths was 
due, in no small degree, to the differing nature of their 
respective governors and General Courts. 

Williston Walker. 

Hartford, Conn. 

1 Ibid., 292. 

2 Ibid., 297, 298. 



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